Green Building Consulting Services
Solid Green Consulting offers consulting services throughout a building lifecycle, starting from initiation, design and construction right through to operation and maintenance of the project. We strive to assist our clients in realising a built environment which is more sustainable and better for all.
7Overview
The basics of our Green Building Consulting services include the following:
- Client Green Building brief: create a vision for a new green building project
- Green Building workshop and Project strategy sessions
- Set targets for environmental performance and/or benchmarking for sustainable design constructional and operations
- EDGE assessment, compliance and and registration
- Corporate Sustainability Planning
- Energy, Thermal and Daylight Modeling
Services Specifics
Green Building Certification
Solid Green is specialised and experienced in both Green Star and LEED green building certification. We offer certification for offices, multi-unit residential, retail Centres, existing buildings, interiors, public & education buildings. All of our team members are Green Star SA Accredited Professionals, some having LEED AP accreditation in addition.
Certification services include:
- Certification workshops, courses and education
- Strategy and risk assessments for certification projects
- Certification consulting and management
- Specification and material review
- Peer review of certification submissions
Building Modelling and Simulation
Through using energy, natural-light and thermal-comfort simulation, Solid Green ensures that the passive and active building design is optimised. Solid Green also provides accreditation modelling for Green Star and LEED projects.
EDGE Services
EDGE compliance is gained in partnership with Solid Green and developers. Solid Green‘s EDGE offering is built for streamlining what are often difficult-to-navigate document-submission processes.
Solid Green‘s EDGE Services – including a registration fee calculator – can be found here.
Geared towards achieving a major improvements in water, embodied energy and energy consumption in the residential market, EDGE is the new rating tool under implementation by the GBCSA.
EDGE comes out of a partnership between the GBCSA, World Bank Group member The International Finance Corporation (IFC), and local roll-out partners The National Home Builder Registration Council (NHBRC) – with Solid Green Consulting as technical consultants on regionalising the tool and testing it for the South African conditions and market. To achieve the EDGE standard, a 20% reduction must be achieved for energy use, water use, and embodied energy in materials over a business as usual baseline.
More on EDGE:
- EDGE: Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies
- EDGE Buildings website.
SANS 10400 XA Energy Regulation
Solid Green has developed an innovative web app, Solid XA, built specifically to take the hassle out of completing and submitting your SANS10400 XA Rational Assessments. Get an instant quote on your assessment and create and manage your projects for free easily through your web browser.
The software that Solid Green uses for modelling is approved for the “rational design path to compliance” under the new SANS energy regulations for buildings. A number of our completed projects’ energy reports have been passed by the council.
Agrément has formally issued a certificate to DesignBuilder software to approve it as certified thermal calculation software for the rational design path to compliance for SANS 10400 Part XA.
Greening Existing Buildings
Existing buildings are the majority of the current building stock and should be at the heart of the conversation and action plans to reduce greenhouse gases and create healthier workspaces, while contributing to the companies’ competitive advantage. Solid Green offers sustainability audits and strategy plans to improve the sustainability of existing buildings.
Live Metering
Building user’s guides are made available to tenants and the public via a bespoke website. Live building and energy and water consumption information is also presented on the web.
Green Leasing
Green leases align the financial and energy incentives of building owners and tenants so they can work together to save money, conserve resources and ensure the efficient operation of buildings. Solid Green assists developers and tenants in achieving the shared benefit of sustainable building features.
General Consulting
- Research studies (e.g. green building market, local construction policies)
- Green Building policy development
- Green Building article /publication writing
- Building and construction materials review and evaluation
- Development of Training Courses